For over thirty years, my father called the classroom home, or at least his home away from home. He rose cheerfully each morning of those thirty-plus years, ready and willing to face the challenge of teaching junior high social studies and drivers education, believing the first developed conscientious voters and the second safe drivers. In all his years of teaching, across four decades that saw far-reaching changes in society and in education, he never lost that belief or that commitment to the job. Ironically though, Dad had not set out to be a teacher. On the contrary, as a young man the only kind of education he was interested in was learning how to make enough money to buy and keep a Harley-Davidson and still have plenty of time to enjoy riding it. And because he was a farm kid who attended a one-room rural school, was raised on homegrown food, went to silent movies once a week, and entered adolescence at the start of the Great Depression, he was accustomed to living with few luxuries. So, he spent the years after his 1935 high school graduation working in gas stations, working occasionally on farms, doing a brief stint with the CCC, and roaming the countryside (and a few unsuspecting towns) with his cycle club, The Knight Crawlers. Till the end of the 1930s, he maintained this itinerant lifestyle, not planning for the future or looking much past his life in the moment. Then came the second World War. Soon after the Invasion of Poland, Dad joined the Iowa National Guard—now thinking about the future and what was to come. As part of the Red Bull 34th Division, he was among the first troops sent to Europe and later to Africa and finally back to Europe. Four years would pass before my father returned to the States. During those years, he spent over 500 days in combat, including the Battles of Hill 609, Kasserine Pass, Anzio, and Monte Cassino. The years he spent witnessing horrors and losing friends and comrades on a daily basis shaped his outlook, his actions, everything he thought and did for the remainder of his life.